Dating apps didn’t kill dating advice—they made it essential

Why the genre thrives in an era of Tinder swipes and algorithmic matches

When Tinder launched in 2012, many predicted the death of dating advice books. Why read about approaching strangers or reading signals when an app delivers endless profiles to your phone? The old problems—where to find eligible singles, how to approach strangers, whether someone was interested—appeared to be solved by technology. Logistics seemed solved: no more bars, setups, or chance encounters needed.

Yet over a decade later, the dating advice industry has exploded. Relationship content dominates TikTok and YouTube, with coaches amassing millions of subscribers. Attachment theory is mainstream. Coaches charge hundreds per hour. Books about modern dating sell briskly, like Matthew Hussey’s Love Life (2024) debuting at #3 on the New York Times bestseller list. Dating apps, generating over $6 billion in global revenue in 2024, haven’t replaced advice—they’ve amplified the need for it. The genre didn’t die. If anything, apps made it more necessary.

Apps solved the wrong problem

Dating advice has always tackled two distinct challenges: the logistics problem (access to partners) and the attraction problem (being desirable to them).

Apps demolished the logistics problem. You no longer need to frequent bars, join clubs, or rely on friends to set you up. Potential matches flood your screen, expanding pools far beyond ancestral limits. The old advice about “putting yourself out there” became almost quaint.

But apps did nothing to solve the attraction problem. In fact, they intensified it. In skewed markets—men often outnumber women dramatically—competition rages. The same qualities that made someone attractive in 1995 still make them attractive today—confidence, humor, status, physical appeal, emotional intelligence. Apps just made the competition for attractive partners more visible and more brutal.

From an evolutionary lens, this is costly signaling amplified: peacocks flaunted tails; today, premium subscriptions, professional headshots, and boosted visibility signal resources and intent.

The result? A new generation desperately seeking guidance on the very thing apps can’t provide: how to actually be attractive to the matches they’re getting.

The paradox of infinite choice—and evolutionary mismatch

Dating apps introduced a problem that barely existed before: choice overload. When your options were limited to people you encountered in daily life, selecting a partner was constrained by circumstance. Now, with theoretically endless alternatives a swipe away, every choice feels provisional. There’s always someone else. Someone better. Someone you haven’t seen yet.

This creates anxiety that previous generations rarely experienced. Am I settling? Should I keep looking? How do I know when someone is “good enough”?

Apps created choice overload, a dilemma our ancestors never faced. In small ancestral groups, mates came with rich context: reputation, nonverbal cues, and community feedback. Apps strip that away, offering what psychologist Deirdre Barrett calls “supernormal stimuli”—exaggerated triggers like junk food’s hyper-concentrated sweetness or pornography’s idealized bodies that elicit stronger responses than natural ones. On dating apps, this manifests in endlessly optimized profiles with flawless angles, filtered perfection, and highlights of exotic travel or luxury, making ordinary real-life partners seem dull by comparison and leaving users perpetually dissatisfied.

Endless options breed paralysis: satisfaction drops, and commitment gets delayed. We’re wired for scarcity and context, not abundance and anonymity. This mismatch fuels burnout, ghosting, and dissatisfaction.

Modern dating advice has rushed to fill this gap: understanding attachment styles to avoid unavailable partners, discussions of “the paradox of choice” to explain why more options don’t lead to more satisfaction, guidance on “defining the relationship” to navigate ambiguity, setting boundaries amid casual intents, or recognizing red flags amplified by digital validation loops. These are new problems requiring new solutions.

Technology changes; psychology doesn’t

Every major shift in dating technology has triggered predictions that advice would become obsolete—and every prediction has proven wrong.

When automobiles became widespread in the 1920s, young couples could escape parental supervision for the first time. Advice books adapted, addressing the new freedoms and dangers of unchaperoned dating. When the sexual revolution upended traditional courtship in the 1960s and 70s, experts like Ann Landers helped readers navigate a suddenly permissive landscape. WhenThe Rules appeared in 1995, it was partly a response to the confusion created by decades of shifting norms.

Dating apps are just the latest technology to reshape the logistics of romance. And like every previous shift, they’ve changed the context without changing the underlying psychology. Humans still form attachments the same way. Status and resources still matter. Physical attraction still operates through evolved preferences. Emotional intelligence still predicts relationship success.

What changes is the expression of these constants. A horse and carriage signaled wealth in 1890; a Tesla signals it today. A formal calling card demonstrated interest in 1900; a thoughtful opening message demonstrates it now. The signals evolve, but signaling itself persists. Dating advice helps people understand what signals matter in their particular moment—and apps have created a moment with its own distinct signaling challenges.

But apps exacerbate dysfunction: narcissistic supply from likes, gendered asymmetries (men optimize access; women filter amid overload). The pandemic accelerated serious-seeking temporarily via video vetting, but revealed apps’ limits for deep, embodied connection.

The real reason advice persists

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: dating apps have made many people worse at dating, not better.

When meeting partners required in-person social skills, people developed those skills through practice: approaching strangers, reading body language, sustaining conversation, handling rejection gracefully—these abilities improved through repetition. Apps allow people to skip this development entirely. You can get a date without ever approaching anyone. You can reject and be rejected without any social consequence.

The result is a generation with unprecedented access to potential partners and underdeveloped skills for converting matches into actual relationships. They can get dates but can’t make them go well. They can start conversations but can’t sustain attraction. They can match with attractive people but can’t understand why nothing progresses.

Advice evolves to bridge this skills gap. The best modern guides aren’t about where to find partners—apps solved that—but about what to do once you’ve found them: how to write messages that get responses, plan dates that build connection, move from texting to meeting to relating, and be genuinely attractive rather than just photogenic.

Coaches like Matthew Hussey exemplify the shift—from tactical Get the Guy (2013) for hookup-era women to philosophical Love Life (2024), addressing app fatigue and self-worth for aging audiences. His YouTube empire (3M+ subscribers) and retreats show how digital delivery scales guidance.

Apps changed the game board. They didn’t change the game. In this seductive digital packaging of primal psychology, dating advice isn’t obsolete—it’s more vital than ever.

Andrew King is the author of Costly Signals: The Evolution of Dating Advice. His research archive spans over 500 dating and relationship books from the 1800s to the present.